SGP and SSP?

As for putting up income tax and council tax at the moment, neither can be done in a progressive manner. Council Tax is a regressive tax that needs to be abolished, and income tax can only be increased across all bands, meaning folk on lower incomes suffer disproportionally. That won’t change even in the next Scotland Act, and this also ignores the stooshie a couple of years ago when we found out SVR was unusable and had effectively been mothballed almost as soon as Holyrood began.

Bear in mind that what the SNP says it would do in regards to tax today does not dictate Scotland’s tax regime even immediately post-independence, never mind in the future. And it’s worth remembering that Finland – one of the beacons of social democracy – is often described as being even more “business-friendly” than even the USA. There’s more than one way to tax the rich…

I look forward to you arguing in favour of the UK spending all of Scotland’s oil money helping poor people all over the world… Or do you not care for the poor outside the borders of the UK? Personally, I see no valour in condemning the poor in Glasgow just for the sake of making some sort of tenuous point about caring for the poor elsewhere.

To be fair, the SNP has said they would even put a ‘devo something’ option on the ballot. You can claim ‘they’re bluffing’ but bluffs can be called if unionist parties actually want further devolution. The fact is they want freedom of movement. They don’t want to be pinned down by a referendum result that forces their hand given that in fact they aren’t much fussed about more powers. It’s all about fox-shooting for them, and at the moment the fox in their sights is the referendum.

No one is going to divert resources away from the referendum campaign

This is weak – the idea that there are not enough undefined ‘resources’ for these large UK-wide parties to formulate policy. Excuses excuses.

null:

Maybe you know something I don’t know, but I have no knowledge of any public commitment by Ming Campbell or the Scottish Liberal Democratic Party on any specific measure for enhancing devolution. Just setting up a talking shop doesn’t unless the party adopts its report as policy.

I don’t expect you will see any for two reasons:

1. This is a bare-knuckle political fight no politician is going to be allowed to concede that their opponent may even have a glimmer of a point. The time for nuanced argument has gone: the referendum makes a bad situation worse.

2. No one is going to divert resources away from the referendum campaign to propose ideas that are not going to be heard, looked at and certainly not voted on.

Doug Daniel:

Well, even if we take it as being a process to achieve a specific outcome (delivering a fairer Scottish society), devolution has thus fair failed to do this since we still have massive inequalities between the richest and poorest, and areas of Scotland with utterly disgraceful levels of poverty (although it’s stopped it getting LESS fair, thanks to protecting our health and education services from privatisation).
So at what point do those who profess to be primarily concerned with social equality reassess their unflinching support for the union and the painfully-slow devolving of powers, and come to the realisation that putting the union above all else is preventing us from getting on with taking the powers we need to truly tackle Scotland’s big social problems?
The most vulnerable in our society don’t have time to wait for politicians to sit around for some arbitrary length of time, pondering how the miniscule transfer of powers in the Scotland Act has fared before thinking “hmmm, maybe we could devolve a tiny aspect of the welfare system…”

There seems to be no reason to believe that independence will make any difference to this. Is anyone proposing a more redistributive tax system for Scotland?

We have the power now to reduce social inequality by either increasing income tax or council tax. Given that the Scottish parliament is unwilling to put up those taxes it can put up to protect services AND insists on a regressive council tax freeze the prospects for improved social equality doesn’t look that great.

If the argument rests on keeping all the oil money for ourselves and spending it to help the poor most then (a) this is a zero sum game as the losers will be poor people elsewhere in the UK, I care about them too, and (b) no-one is saying that or promising that, instead I hear about cuts to corporation tax – not going to deliver social equality is it? Trickle-down theory rears its ugly head.

Andrew Smith:

It was people like Scottish Labour Action who fought for devolution – it was not the UK Labour Party. The UK Labour Party per se had no particular interest in devolution. They were persuaded of it by internal pressure from small n nationalists within Labour a big part of their acceptance was the idea that devolution would kill nationalism. Obviously that hasn’t quite worked out.
That tension between small n nationalists in the Labour Party and ideological unionists has become more and more taut. It may even snap, who knows? We see what people like Henry McLeish really think once they are off the leash.

Indy – you are only correct to a point. SLA – which I was a supporter of – was a small group basically consisting of former student activists. The successful attempts by the right of the party “the project” to quash left-wing voices showed how weak their position was. Even though their argument was strong.

You are missing the influence of the STUC and left-leaning unions and union leaders (Bob Thompson, Bill Speirs and Jim Devine), as well as the genuine conviction of the likes of Smith and Dewar. Most support for devolution was genuine from all wings of the party. Those – like Robertson – who saw it as a tactic were really in a minority. Before 1997 most opponents like Cook (even becoming a SLA supporter) had been converted and others like Wilson had realised that the argument was lost. Leaving the eccentric Dalyell and the miniscule ILP* as the only opponents of Devolution within the party.

Reject all authority you cannot justify by reason!

If Scotland retains its representation at Westminster it is only a matter of time before Scottish MPs are forcing policy upon an English/Welsh/Northern Irish majority (or preventing the adoption of their favoured policy). Alternatively, if Scots MPs leave Westminster (similar arrangement to the Isle of Mann and Channel Islands) then sooner or later the England/Wales/Northern Irish MPs will force a repugnant policy upon Scotland.

In operation, a Devo-Max arrangement has the effect of reducing either England/Wales/Northern Ireland or Scotland to a quasi-colony of the other. I think that is an arrangement that will long endure.

Of course, the cynic in me would say to you that devolution (whether the Scottish Office pre-1999 or the Scottish Parliament thereafter) is a political construct designed to serve political ends and not designed to get to grips with the problems that Scotland faces.

You make a good point about the time available for the consideration of the legislation. Moreover (unlike the Scottish Grand Committee) a Conservative government in London cannot ‘pack’ the Scottish Parliament with English, Welsh and Northern Irish MPs as John Major did in 1992.

These are important developments to the devolution settlement, but Labour could have used its 1997 mandate to substantially redefine the package of devolved powers in a manner that allowed the Scottish Parliament to tackle the root causes of the Social and Economic problems that Scotland faces.